New Accessibility Features Available On Kindle and Fire

January 15, 201811:33 pm

Amazon has been making steady improvements to the accessibility of the Kindle e-books and the Kindle reading experience. Earlier this year they added support for ALT text for images to Kindle e-books, which were made available to blind and low vision customers on Kindle for PC and on Fire OS with VoiceView. Now there is support for accessible math equations.

Customers can use the 2017.4 release of the NVDA screen reader to read math equations in Kindle e-books. NVDA is able to parse equations encoded in MathML, allowing customers to navigate within those math equations as well as review them via Nemeth math codes on a connected braille display. Publisher provided ALT text for math equations is also supported, and is available to blind and low vision customers using NVDA, as well as via the VoiceView screen reader on Fire Tablets. Already hundreds of Kindle e-Books are available with accessible math equations.

Earlier Amazon also added a number of text rendering features to Kindle book reading across many of their reading surfaces. On Kindle e-Readers, iOS, Fire OS, Android, and PC customers can choose the OpenDyslexic font, adjust page margins, adjust line spacing, and select right ragged text rendering. On the all-new Kindle Oasis, as well as current releases of Kindle reader on iOS, FireOS, and Android, customers can choose from a number of font boldness options, increasing the weight of any font used within the Kindle e-book. Also available on the all-new Kindle Oasis is a Large Display option to increase the size of the user interface on several key screens, and Invert Black and White for customers who prefer white text and graphics on a black background. Invert Black and White applies to the entire user interface as well as e-book content.

Amazon has also updated the gesture language for VoiceView customers on Fire Tablets, introducing a host of new features, paired with new and improved gestures for using them. VoiceView customers on 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th generation Tablets are receiving a free, over-the-air update to Fire OS 5.6.0, which includes the new VoiceView gestures. The new gestures/features include the Stop Speech command (two-finger single-tap), Turn Screen Curtain On/Off (three-finger triple-tap), the new Learn Mode for gesture practice (four-finger double-tap) and more…

About Nelson Régo

Nelson Régo is the owner and founder of the Cool Blind Tech website since November of 2012. Nelson launched the first show on March 14, 2013. He also directs the website as a whole, hiring staff, originating new shows, and approving all content.